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Almost 700 incidents of badger persecution were reported in 2013, including badgers killed by dogs and snares and setts gassed with vehicle exhausts, according to a report by the Badger Trust.

On the Guardian website last week (2nd October), Damian Carrington reported that the trust believed there were many thousands more incidents that went unreported and that badger persecution was rising.

Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the Badger Trust, said the controversial badger culls in England were making killing the animals seem more acceptable to some. “The demonisation of the species by the government and the farming industry to justify the disastrous badger cull policy is making a bad situation worse,” he said.

The charge was rejected as “totally irresponsible” by a spokesman for the National Farmers Union. “The NFU totally condemns any illegal activity that results in the death of any animal or the destruction of its habitat and always has. We utterly reject the allegation that we have demonised badgers. We have always said we want to see healthy badgers and healthy cattle.”

The Badger Trust report details a wide range of badger persecution, such as poisoning and setts being burned out with petrol. Badger baiting and sett interference, including tunnels being ploughed up by farmers or dug out by property developers, were the most frequently-reported incidents. “Badger persecution is a blight on our modern society and involves people from all backgrounds and walks of life,” said Dyer.

There were 697 reports in 2013, up from 353 in 2012. The trust noted marked fluctuations from year to year, which it says may result from the difficulty of gathering data on crimes committed in rural areas. There were 851 reports in 2012 and 198 in 2011. A spokesman for Defra said: “Any illegal activity should be reported to the police.”

Protesters have managed to seriously disrupt the badger cull in Gloucestershire, according to a story on the Guardian website today (23rd September).

Gloscon, the company licensed to carry out the cull, wrote to farmers in the cull zone to say that activists have been very successful at preventing marksmen achieving “planned numbers” of badger kills.

The NFU has refused to comment on the letter, but the news is undoubtedly bad for the NFU and the government. Last year's culls were deemed unsuccessful because the required number of badgers was not reached.

Protesters have added heat-detecting equipment this year so they can spot cullers in the dark.

The report also says that a female badger was discovered dead by an anti-cull patrol having suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, suggesting that she died a slow death rather than the supposed quick kill of a shot to the chest, which the cullers aim to achieve. The badger was taken to Secret World wildlife rescue centre.

Employees of the company running the pilot cull in Somerset were present in police operations rooms and directed the deployment of officers against protesters, a police investigation has said.

Around half of the personnel in the police's night-time control centre were either from HNV Associates or the NFU, according to the report, seen by the Guardian.

Campaigners said the report shows that the police acted almost as a 'private force' for the culling company.

Damian Carrington in the Guardian online reports: "A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police said having cull representatives in the control room gave them real-time information that helped keep the public safe and said changes to policing the cull when it resumes this year were still being discussed. The NFU, which also speaks for HNV Associates, denied that its members or anyone from the culling company had directed police action."

But the report says that of six people in the police control room, three were officers, while two were from HNV Associates and one was from the NFU. The police communications officer in the room said he felt the cull representatives "were actually directing the police" where to go to deal with incidents. The senior officer investigating the complaint, which had been made by a member of the public who had been "sett sitting" when badgers were shot, said that if the officers involved had been directed by cull operatives, this was "of concern and should not have been the case".

Shropshire Badger Group has launched a programme to encourage local farmers to participate in vaccination of badgers against bTB. The programme will be free of cost for the first six farmers in the county who sign up. Farmers can contact SBG on 01743 271999 or via the contact form on our website.

After issuing the following press release last week, SBG has received several expressions of interest from farmers, which are currently being followed up, but more applications are welcome.

"Following the announcement by the Secretary of State that there is to be no extension of badger culling this year, and presuming that there is unlikely to be any reintroduced in 2015, during election year, the Shropshire Badger Group wants to reaffirm its support for badger vaccination as a very effective method of dealing with bovine TB within the badger population, in which all the surveys show that the level of disease is actually quite low.

"Vaccination is a highly successful and proven method of dealing with disease in both animal and human populations and we have every confidence in the extensive trials of the BCG vaccine at the Government Research Station in Gloucestershire as well as gathering the evidence from the Welsh vaccination project, as well as experience from our own and Shropshire Wildlife Trust’s involvement in vaccination projects within Shropshire.

"We are well aware that bovine TB is a very difficult problem within the farming industry and so, as a gesture of our desire to help and support farmers in dealing with this problem, we intend to demonstrate our confidence in badger vaccination by offering full four-year vaccination schemes to the first six Shropshire farmers to contact us; totally free of charge.

"For any applications beyond the first six, we will provide all the preparatory work without charge and, if we can find further funding, then we will continue with the totally free schemes."

The British Veterinary Association appears to be threatening to withdraw its support for the government's disastrous “pilot” badger culls.

Defra's response to the findings of the Independent Experts’ Panel has been criticised, with critics remaining unconvinced that the called-for improvements will be made in order to make the culls both more effective and more humane.

The Western Morning News reports today (23rd April 2014):

“The battle over the findings of the Independent Experts’ Panel into the pilot badger culls has taken an increasingly bitter turn in recent days, with the British Veterinary Association threatening to withdraw support for the culls.

“The BVA Council said effectiveness and humaneness would have to improve before the culls could be rolled out more widely. And it criticised Defra’s response to the IEP report which it said failed to provide convincing evidence that the necessary improvements would be made. It is calling for an urgent meeting with Defra.

“The BVA said it had decided to support the continuation of cull in Somerset and Gloucestershire – but only because it said it feared halting culling now could lead to an increase in bovine TB.

“The BVA’s intervention came as the NFU’s South West regional board expressed frustration about the direction the fight to reduce bovine TB – in the wild and in cattle – was taking. It said politics had taken precedence over animal health and was compromising the welfare of all susceptible species, including domestic pets.”